Thursday, February 25, 2016

This is a synthesis of ten years of research by the P2P
Foundation on the emerging practices of new productive communities and
the ethical entrepreneurial coalitions that create livelihoods for
shared resources. It was written for the Uncommons conference in Berlin
last October by P2P founder Michel Bauwens.

As we have tried to show
elsewhere, the emergence of commons-oriented peer production has
generated the emergence of a new logic of collaboration between open
productive communities who created shared resources (commons) through
contributions, and those market-oriented entities that created added
value on top or along these shared commons.

This article addresses the emerging practices that should inspire
these entities of the ‘ethical’ economy. The main aim it to create new
forms that go beyond the traditional corporate form and its extractive
profit-maximizing practices of value extraction. Instead of extractive
forms of capital, we need generative forms, that co-create value with
and for the commoners.

I am using the form of commandments to explain the new practices. All
of them have already emerged in various forms, but need to be
generalized and integrated.

What the world and humanity, and all those beings that are affected
by our activities require is a mode of production, and relations of
production, that are “free, fair and sustainable" at the same time.

I. OPEN AND FREE1. Thou shalt practice open business models based on shared knowledge
Closed business models are based on artificial scarcity. Though
knowledge is a non- or anti-rival good that gains in use value the more
it is shared, and though it can be shared easily and at very low
marginal cost when it is in digital form, many extractive firms still
use artificial scarcity to extract rents from the creation or use of
digitized knowledge. Through legal repression or technological sabotage,
naturally shareable goods are made artificially scarce, so that extra
profits can be generated. This is particularly galling in the context of
life-saving or planet-regenerating technological knowledge. The first
commandment is therefore the ethical commandment of sharing what can be
shared, and of only creating market value from resources that are scarce
and create added value on top or along these commons. Open business
models are market strategies that are based on the recognition of
natural abundance and the refusal to generate income and profits by
making them artificially scarce.Thou shalt find more information on this here

II. FAIR2. Thou shalt practice open co-operativism
Many new more ethical and generative forms are being created, that
have a higher level of harmony with the contributory commons. The key
here is to choose post-corporate forms that are able to generate
livelihoods for the contributing commoners.
Open cooperatives in particular would be cooperatives that share the following characteristics:
1) they are mission-oriented and have a social goal that is related to the creation of shared resources
2) they are multi-stakeholder governed, and include all those that are affected by or contributing to the particular activity
3) they constitutionally, in their own rules, commit to co-create commons with the productive communities
I often add the fourth condition that they should be global in
organisational scope in order to create counter-power to extractive
multinational corporations.
Cooperatives are one of the potential forms that commons-friendly
market entitities could take. We see the emergence of more open forms
such as neo-tribes (think of the workings of the Ouishare community), or
more tightly organized neo-builds, such as Enspiral.org, Las Indias or
the Ethos Foundation. Yet more open is the network form chose by the
Sensorica open scientific hardware community, which wants to more
tightly couple contributions with generated income, by allowing all
microtasked contributions in the reward system, through open value or
contributory accounting (more below).Thou shalt find more information on this here.

3. Thou shalt practice open value or contributory accounting
Peer production is based on distributed tasks, freely contributed by
an open community-driven collaborative infrastructure. The tradition of
salaries based on fixed job description may not be the most appropriate
way to reward those that contribute to such processes. Hence, the
emergence of open value accounting or contributory accounting. As
practiced already by Sensorica, this means that any contributor may add
contributions, log them according to project number, and after peer
evaluation is assigned ‘karma points’. When income is generated, it
flows into these weighted contributions, so that every contributor is
fairly rewarded. Contributory accounting, or other similar solutions,
are important to avoid that only a few contributors closely related to
the market capture the value that has been co-created by a much larger
community. Open book accounting ensure that the (re)distribution of
value is transparent for all contributors.Thou shalt find more information on this here.

4. Thou shalt insure fair distribution and benefit-sharing through Copyfair licensing
The copyleft licenses allow anyone to re-use the necessary knowledge
commons on the condition that changes and improvements are added to that
same commons. This is a great advance, but should not be abstracted
from the need for fairness. When moving to physical production which
involves finding resources for buildings, raw materials and payments to
contributors, the unfettered commercial exploitation of such commons
favours extractive models. Thus the need to maintain the knowledge
sharing, but to ask reciprocity for the commercial exploitation of the
commons, so that there is a level playing field for the ethical economic
entities that do internalize social and environmental costs. This is
achieved through copyfair licenses, which allow full sharing of the
knowledge but ask for reciprocity in exchange for the right of
commercialization.Thou shalt find more information on this here.

5. Thou shalt practice solidarity and mitigate the risks of work and life through Commonfare practices
One of the strong results of financial and neoliberal globalization
is that the power of nation-states has gradually weakened, and there is
now a strong and integrated effort to unwind the solidarity mechanisms
that were embedded in the welfare state models. As long as we do not
have the power to reverse this slide, it is imperative that we
reconstruct solidarity mechanisms of distributed scope, a practice which
we could call ‘commonfare’. Examples such as the Broodfonds
(Netherlands), Friendsurance (Germany) and the health sharing ministries
(U.S.), or cooperative entities such Coopaname in France, show us the
new forms of distributed solidarity that can be developed to deal with
the risks of life and work.Thou shalt find more information on this here.

III. SUSTAINABLE6. Thou shalt use open and sustainable designs for an open source circular economy
Open productive communities insure maximum participation through
modularity and granularity. Because they operate in a context of shared
and abundant resources, the practice of planned obsolescence, which is a
feature of profit-maximizing corporations, is alien to them. Ethical
entrepreneurial entities will therefore use these open and sustainable
designs and produce sustainable good and services.Thou shalt find more information on this here. http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Design

7. Thou shalt move beyond an exclusive reliance on
imperfect market price signals towards mutual coordination of production
through open supply chains and open book accounting
What decision-making is for planning, and pricing is for the market, mutual coordination is for the commons!
We will never achieve a sustainable ‘circular economy’--in which the
output of one production process is used as an input for another-- with
closed value chains in which every cooperation has to be painfully
negotiated under conditions of little transparency. But entrepreneurial
coalitions that are already co-dependent on a collaborative commons can
create eco-systems of collaboration through open supply chains, in which
the production process becomes transparent, and through which every
participant can adapt his behaviour based on the knowledge available in
the network. There is no need for over-production when the production
realities of the network become common knowledge.Thou shalt find more information on this here.

8. Thou shalt practice cosmo-localization
“What is light is global, and what is heavy is local”: this is the
new principle animating commons-based peer production in which knowledge
is globally shared, but production can take place on demand and based
on real needs through a network of distributed coworking and
microfactories. Certain studies have shown that up to two-thirds of
matter and energy goes not to production, but to transport, which is
clearly unsustainable. A return to re-localized production is a sine qua
non for the transition towards sustainable production.Thou shalt find more information on this here.

9. Thou shalt mutualize physical infrastructures
Platform cooperatives, data cooperatives and fairshare forms of
distributed ownership can be used to co-own our infrastructures of
production.
The misnamed sharing economy from AirBnB and Uber shows the potential
of matching idle resources. Co-working, skillsharing, ridesharing are
examples of the many ways in which we can re-use and share resources to
dramatically augment the thermo-dynamic efficiencies of our consumption.
In the right context of co-ownership and co-governance, a real
sharing economy can achieve dramatic advances in reduced resource use.
Our means of production --inclusive machines -- can be mutualized and
self-owned by all those that create value.Thou shalt find more information on this here.

10. Thou shalt mutualize generative capital
Generative forms of capital cannot rely on an extractive money supply
that is based on compound interest that is due to extractive banks. We
have to abolish the 38% financial tax that is owed on all goods and
services and transform our monetary system, and substantively augment
the use of mutual credit systems.Thou shalt find more information on this here. Source: http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/10-commandments-of-commons-economics

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Laura Pinger and Lisa Flook share their lessons from creating a "kindness curriculum" for young students.

Walking to class one day,
one of us (Laura) saw a young student crying and waiting for his mother
to arrive—he had split his chin while playing. When Laura got to class,
the other students were very upset and afraid for their friend, full of
questions about what would happen to him. Laura decided to ask the class
how they could help him.

“Caring practice!” exclaimed one of the children—and they all sat in a
circle offering support and well wishes. The children immediately
calmed and they continued with their lesson.

This is what’s possible when kids learn to be kind at school.

Various mindfulness programs have been developed for adults, but we and our colleagues at the Center for Healthy Minds
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, wanted to develop a curriculum
for kids. Every school teaches math and reading, but what about
mindfulness and kindness?

We ended up bringing a 12-week curriculum to six schools in the
Midwest. Twice a week for 20 minutes, pre-kindergarten kids were
introduced to stories and practices for paying attention, regulating
their emotions, and cultivating kindness. It’s just the beginning, but
the initial results
of our research, coauthored with Professor Richard Davidson and
graduate research assistant Simon Goldberg, suggest that this program
can improve kids’ grades, cognitive abilities, and relationship skills.

Why teach kindness to kids?

The school environment can be very stressful; in addition to any
issues they bring from home, many students struggle to make friends and
perform well in class. Being excluded, ignored, or teased is very
painful for a young child, and we thought it could be impactful to teach
empathy and compassion.

When other kids are suffering—like that boy who split his chin—can we
understand how they might be feeling? Kindness bridges those gaps and
helps build a sense of connection among the students, the teachers, and
even the parents. Learning to strengthen their attention and regulate
their emotions are foundational skills that could benefit kids in school
and throughout their whole lives.

On top of that, having classrooms full of mindful, kind kids
completely changes the school environment. Imagine entire schools—entire
districts—where kindness is emphasized. That would be truly powerful.
Teaching kindness is a way to bubble up widespread transformation that
doesn’t require big policy changes or extensive administrative
involvement.

Running and studying a Kindness Curriculum

If you had visited one of our classrooms during the 12-week program,
you might have seen a poster on the wall called “Kindness Garden.” When
kids performed an act of kindness or benefitted from one, they added a
sticker to the poster. The idea is that friendship is like a seed—it
needs to be nurtured and taken care of in order to grow. Through that
exercise, we got students talking about how kindness feels good and how
we might grow more friendship in the classroom.

Another day, you might have found students in pairs holding Peace
Wands, one with a heart and one with a star. The child with the heart
wand speaks (“from the heart”); the other child (the “star listener”)
listens and then repeats back what was said. When there was a conflict
between students, they used the wands to support the process of paying
attention, expressing their feelings, and building empathy.

Our Kindness Curriculum combines creative activities like these, as
well as books, songs, and movement, to communicate concepts in a way
that is understandable to four year olds. Our instructors taught the
curriculum with active participation by classroom teachers.

The Kindness Curriculum is designed around the ABCs—or, more specifically, A to G:

Attention. Students learn that what they focus on
is a choice. Through focusing attention on a variety of external
sensations (the sound of a bell, the look of a stone) and internal
sensations (feeling happy or sad), children learn they can direct their
attention and maintain focus.

Breath and Body. Students learn to use their breath
to cultivate some peace and quiet. Instead of listening to a
meditation, we played a song from Betsy Rose’s CD Calm Down Boogie,
“Breathing In, Breathing Out,” while the children rested on their backs
with a beanie baby on their belly. The beanie provided an object to
“rock to sleep” with the natural in- and out-breath, while the breathing
calmed the body.

Caring. Here, we teach kids to think about how others are feeling and cultivate kindness. We read the book Sumi’s First Day of School Ever,
the story of a foreign student who struggles with English, and
brainstorm ways to help a student like Sumi—as simple as offering a
smile.

Depending on other people. We emphasize that everyone supports and is supported by others through the book Somewhere Today,
which describes acts of kindness that are going on in the world right
now. Students learn to see themselves as helpers and begin to develop
gratitude for the kindness of others.

Emotions. What do emotions feel like and look like?
How can you tell what you’re feeling? We play a game where the teacher
and students take turns pretending to be angry, sad, happy, or
surprised, guessing which emotion was expressed, and talking about what
that emotion feels like in the body.

Forgiveness. Young kids can be particularly hard on themselves—and others—and we teach them that everyone makes mistakes. A book called Down the Road tells the story of a girl who breaks the eggs she bought for her parents, but they forgive her.

Gratitude. We want kids to recognize the kind acts
that other people do for them, so we have them pretend to be various
community workers like bus drivers and firefighters. Then, they talk
about being thankful to those people for how they help us.

Sixty-eight students participated in the research, with about half
going through the Kindness Curriculum and the other half measured as a
comparison. To investigate the impact of the curriculum, we tested
children before and after the training period.

“Students who went through the curriculum showed more
empathy and kindness and a greater ability to calm themselves down when
they felt upset, according to teachers’ ratings.”

The results of our study were promising. Students who went through
the curriculum showed more empathy and kindness and a greater ability to
calm themselves down when they felt upset, according to teachers’
ratings. In an exercise with stickers, they consistently shared about
half of them, whereas students who hadn’t gone through the curriculum
shared less over time. They earned higher grades at the end of the year
in certain areas (notably for social and emotional development), and
they showed improvement in the ability to think flexibly and delay
gratification, skills that have been linked to health and success later in life.

This was a small study, and we’d love to see deeper investigations
into our Kindness Curriculum in the future. For example, what happens
over a longer time if we support students’ practice throughout the year
and into the next school year and beyond? If parents got involved in the
curriculum, they could provide powerful support as well.

“Kindfulness” in daily life

Mindfulness and kindness go hand in hand, so much so that the phrase
“kindfulness” accidentally (but aptly) came out in one of our
conversations and has stuck with us. While we administered a specific
curriculum for the purposes of our study, any teacher or parent can
bring the principles behind it to bear on their interactions with
children.

The first key is simply to model mindfulness and kindness. For
example, what quality of attention do we bring when we interact with our
kids? Do we give them our full attention—eye contact, kneeling down to
speak with them, asking questions—or are we distracted? Kids are
extraordinarily observant, and they pick up on whether we are paying
attention to them. By modeling behavior, and through our interactions,
we show them what it’s like to be seen and heard and to be compassionate
with others.

Another simple activity is to relax and feel the natural breath for a
few moments during the day. Kids need to be active and run around, of
course, but they can also benefit from cultivating a bit of stillness.
For example, when Laura enters the classroom, she or one of her students
rings a bell, which signals students to listen until the sound ends and
then feel five in- and out-breaths together. This practice settles
students and gathers their attention so they are more ready to learn.

We can also help kids reflect on their emotions, which sometimes feel
overwhelming, and change their relationship to them. After a child
calms down, we can sit with them and reflect on that feeling. Which part
of the body felt angry, happy, or upset? All emotions are natural, so
kids shouldn’t feel bad about experiencing them; we can teach them to
cultivate a kinder attitude. For example, a parent might say, “When I
feel sad or angry, it doesn’t feel good in my body. But all people have
feelings. Feelings help us learn about ourselves and others. I can be
kind to myself no matter what feelings come. I can get better and better
at learning from my feelings.”

And, by the way, practices like these are equally useful for parents
and teachers, who are struggling with stressful workplaces or busy
classrooms. For teachers, brief practices with students many times
during the school day allow everyone to pause and be fully present to
themselves, each other, and what is happening, whether it is pleasant or
unpleasant. For parents, mindfulness and self-kindness training allow
them to be more present with their spouse and children at home and with
their coworkers at work.

Finally, to combine the concepts of mindfulness and kindness, we can
teach caring practice to our kids. These phrases work well for children:
May I be safe, may I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be peaceful.

When the boy split his chin, the other four-year-olds got together to do this practice: May you be safe, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be peaceful.

And these wishes can be extended further: To my entire classroom,
my school, my neighborhood, my whole community…May we all be safe, may
we all be happy, may we all be healthy, may we all be peaceful.

In the midst of their distress, the children found comfort and
support for themselves and their friend rather than feeling upset and
worried. They later shared with him that they had offered him these
wishes. It’s these small changes, spread across classrooms, that could
make schools more kind—and educate a new generation of more
compassionate and connected citizens.

Laura Pinger completed her M.S. in
communication sciences and disorders and is currently a Senior Outreach
Specialist at the Center for Healthy Minds (CHM) at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison, at the Waisman Center. She develops and teaches
research-related mindfulness-based curricula for educators, students,
and parents.

Lisa Flook completed her PhD in clinical
psychology at UCLA and is currently a scientist at CHM. CHM has been
investigating the impact of mindfulness-based practices in educational
settings with students, teachers, and parents.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

NRDC
analysis illustrates the potential for billions of gallons of rainwater
falling on eight U.S. cities to be harvested every year

As America’s expanding urban areas struggle with major water supply
shortages and runoff pollution problems, capturing rainwater from
rooftops provides a tremendous untapped opportunity to increase water
supply and improve water quality, according to a recent analysis on “Capturing Rainwater from Rooftops” by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

In its report, NRDC demonstrates the benefits and potential of
rooftop rainwater capture, a “green infrastructure” practice that can be
used to retain stormwater runoff on-site, by analyzing ways in which
eight diverse U.S. cities could incorporate this simple water collection
approach. By comparing annual rainfall totals to rooftop coverage, NRDC
determined that opportunities exist in each city to capture hundreds of
millions of gallons of rainfall every year for reuse. By doing so,
residents of these communities would obtain inexpensive onsite water
supplies for non-potable uses, such as yard watering and toilet
flushing; reduce runoff pollution; and would lower energy costs
associated with treating and delivering drinkable-quality water.

“Our analysis shows that solutions to one of America’s
biggest urban challenges are right in front of us – in this case,
literally falling from the sky,” said Noah Garrison, lead author of the
report and NRDC water policy analyst. “The potential exists for cities
throughout the U.S. to capture hundreds of millions or even billions of
gallons of rainwater each year from urban rooftops. We encourage
policymakers to look closely at the bottom-line benefits of rooftop
rainwater harvesting, and consider implementing policies and incentives
that generate more momentum for rainwater collection while making the
practice more accessible as well.”

Specifically, NRDC’s report illustrates opportunities for capturing,
treating and supplying harvested rainwater for non-potable purposes in
Atlanta, Ga.; Austin, Texas; Chicago, Ill.; Denver, Colo.; Fort Myers,
Fla.; Kansas City, Mo.; Madison, Wisc.; and Washington, D.C. Several
success stories also demonstrate the effectiveness of rooftop rainwater
capture for new construction in New York, N.Y., and redeveloped
buildings in Santa Monica, Calif. The total annual volume of rainwater
falling on rooftops in these cities alone, if captured in its entirety,
would be enough to meet the water supply needs of at least 21 percent to
as much as 75 percent of each city’s population.

The report comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is in the
process of updating its national standards for controlling runoff
pollution from new development and existing paved areas. NRDC encourages
the agency to adopt national standards for on-site stormwater retention
that will increase green infrastructure approaches such as rainwater
harvesting. As a result, communities can effectively transform polluted
runoff flowing to our waterways into captured rooftop rainwater used as
an on-site water supply resource.

“Urban areas struggling with water supply issues and
runoff pollution should look to this report for ideas and
encouragement,” said Jon Devine, senior attorney in NRDC’s water
program.

NRDC encourages cities and states to develop policy options and
incentives to encourage more rainwater harvesting. These include: